7:30 11/30

40,000 to go. 16.5 hours to do it.

 

Excel says I need to write 2500 word hours now, but that’s mostly because I’m a miserable slacker for many reasons during the latenight hours. I’ll make it up quickly enough.

the last midnight

so we shall end as we began.

It is now just past midnight. I have just shy of 24 hours to write about 52,000 words. My Excel spreadsheet says that that’s about 2166 words an hour.  I usually write more than that in any given hour, so this seems on the surface perfectly doable. I have already decided not to go to bed, which is something. Also, at the beginning of the month, my hands weren’t as used to typing *quite* this much and so rebelled, but my hands are good now. This is totally doable

And in the event that I am truly close (but no cake), I do have 3000 words I cut out of the story on the first day I started writing it. It was written in November, so technically counts, but I would prefer not to count it if I don’t have to. It would feel like cheating to me.

In any case, the story is going along swimmingly, everything is starting to be resolved in more or less coherent ways.

I’ll probably update several times during the day (read: whenever I get bored and think of something to say here instead of the word document), and we’ll see if I can’t drag myself over that finish line.

On another note, if I think that it’s very likely I’ll get there by 11pm and I haven’t already got there, I will probably verify before I hit the million so that there’s no heartbreak at 11:59 when the thing takes too long.

7pm 11/29

935. 65k to go

 

have to write 2,240 words/hr for the next 29 hrs.

 

have soda. can write.

day 29 photo montage!

Yeah. I should be writing. 75k to go. Still, I’m taking a break

 

The first set of soda cans

 

The second set.

 

Where shit gets done. And yeah, it’s green. I periodically change the colors so that my eyes don’t get too badly strained. Also, yes that is a clunky old IPod up there on the shelf. His name is Bob.

 

Tools of the trade 1: wrist braces. The other is just behind it on the desk

 

Tools of the trade 2: Hat because my room is the coldest room in the house. Seriously. walk in the door, and the temperature drops about 10 degrees. Also wearing woolly socks, but I’m not taking a picture of those.

 

An example of the clusterfk my room has become over the past 30 days

 

And the ever-looming yellow piece of paper!

Okay. Back to writing now

hell yeah

(50k in 28.5 hours ain’t bad)

Buckled down, charging ahead

4:03pm 11/27: 850,000 words.

My super-desperate goal is to make sure that I have better than 900,000 words before noon on the 29th…I don’t want the 100k in 36 hours again.

But I think I’d rather have a bit more breathing room than that.

I’ve been fking around a lot lately. I’ve been sitting on the computer telling myself “one more game of FreeCell and then you write” and an hour later, I’m still playing FreeCell. Then I switched to Hearts. Same problem. I’m a procrastinator by nature, but the time for that has come and gone. I’ve got 150,000 words to write in the next 80 hours. I think I can do it, but I’m going to have to

a) stop fking around and

b) write and

c) stop taking ‘10 minute naps that turn into 6 hour sleeps’. Yeah, I recognize I need to sleep. Everyone does, and if I go completely without sleep between here and midnight on the 30th, the last few thousand words just aren’t going to be recognizable as English. But I need to start setting myself goals and actually meeting them before letting myself take these naps that I know will be longer than 10 minutes

Now is the time for dedication. Now is the time for me to look at this piece of paper on my desk and start crossing off some more of those 15k intervals.

this time last year, and other things

Well, I have no idea where I actually was. I’m useless at keeping charts/graphs, because I’m just lazy and unorganized. I’ll do it for the first couple of days and then it’ll just go flying out the window. Sorta like my schedule… (*sigh*)

In any case, I know that at this point last year I was definitely not even at 700k, and probably closer to 650k. So it’s awesome to see that I’m doing so much better this year than I did last year. Part of me wants to say “okay, Kate, that’s good enough. Just try your hardest the rest of the month, and if you don’t make the mill, that’s cool”.

Except I’m hypercompetitive at all the (very, very few) things that I’m good at. I made myself a promise at the beginning of the month that I’d get to the million. My mother knows I’m trying for the million (admittedly, she thinks I’m nuts, but that’s what moms are for). I’ve got the damn outlines to get to the million. And I could get a hundred and one comments about how I’d still be an incredible winner for getting 800 or 850 or 900 or whatever, but it still won’t feel good enough for me. And if that’s egotistical, well and good. So it goes.

By no means am I giving up. I’m sitting here now wishing my bed goodnight. My days are herefore dividing into 8 hour blocks, during each of which I will get 15k (except the one immediately following midnight tonight, where I’ll get 20k). That’s the new goal, and it leaves plenty of leeway for day 30 (as I’ll only have to write 15k then). I can feel the pressure of the days weighing down on me. For anyone who thinks otherwise, this is not easy for me. I don’t physically hurt anywhere (nope, my hands are well and good and that’s in all honesty), but the psychological/mental strain of this is incredible, and my own sense of drive and purpose makes me bear down harder on myself, creating one of those nasty feedback loops.

In more pleasant news, the dystopia is going well. As I posted elsewhere, the dictator has just been kidnapped right under the nose of the group who were trying to kidnap him first, while three people scheme for leadership of the country, the dictator’s son goes on a mission to legalize all narcotics, a serial killer film star tries to figure out how he kills them and doesn’t know that he will become invaluably useful to the pair of people ( a woman and a foreign ambassador from a far-off land) who are trying to understand why they’re being hunted and what that has to do with the fact that they’ve been smuggling brilliant kids out of the country so that their potential isn’t stunted by the despotism of the country, and a journalist who has already been jailed once for speaking his mind goes over the fence to the area where the non-citizens are kept, which will blow the whole country apart.

Switching Things Up

So, I have certain ways of doing things, certain fixations if you will, about writing.  The important one today is the fact that when I plan my outlines for my first drafts, one of the first things I do is decide how long the chapters are. That’s right, before I put down any content material for any of them, I decide how long they’re going to be. This year, for both of my 50,000 pieces, chapters were 2k apiece.  In the trilogy, book 1’s chapters were 13k, book 2’s 8k, and book 3’s 5k. For the one I’m working on right now, they’re 1k.

This is important for me, psychologically. I can’t stand getting up in the middle of a chapter and not finishing it. Consequently, when I was writing book 1, I had to usually have at least 4 hours of writing time, sequential, planned, and this didn’t come that easy. And then yesterday I started this new one, with its thousand word chapters, and it seems like they breeze right by (okay, not quite breeze, but they don’t feel as difficult as the 13,000 word chapters). Switching up the intervals in which I write helps to adjust me mentally and make me feel as though I’m accomplishing more even when I’m technically not.

So, how’s Just a Glimpse coming? Well, I’m 34,000 words in and I had to rewrite 3,000 of them because I suddenly realized I was using the wrong character. The neat thing about this one is that it’s told from 15 viewpoints (yeah, it’s too many, but it seemed like a good idea during planning), and this has so far been my shoddiest outline. I’ve got the world pretty well developed (in stark contrast to the trilogy), but when it came to the outline, I simply randomized the order of the names, slapped them in a word document, and walked away. So the first 15,000 words are a little slow and rambling as I try to find my way around the novel, but in the second 15, there slowly appears to be a semblance of plot. For all but one character, a doctor who I only appeared to be able to write waxing elegant about how awful it was that people got hurt. And then I introduced the reporter that one of my characters meets and realized that he should be character number ten, not the doctor. So I cut out the doctor’s three thousand words and have rewritten them with the reporter’s. Other than that, things are going pretty well. Novel-wise, at least.

I’m back to being a full day behind, and it’s pretty bumming. I know I’m going to beat last year’s wordcount, and that’s something, but I’m starting to get less and less optimistic about the million. I’ve got a much easier Thanksgiving than some (first-generation immigrants with every semblance of family overseas), and my mother knows I’m writing like mad, it’s just that it’s going to come down to the number of hours I can force myself to do this and the number of times I can go with minimal sleep. That being said, I’m far from giving up, I’m just starting to look at the calendar and seeing that the month is drifting on by without me. Hell, I just need one more day in November, and we’re all good!

I’m at 734k now. By midnight tonight, the goal is 780. It’s huge, it would be my biggest day since the 50k on November 1, but I’m going to have to start pulling out the massive counts or this million thing just isn’t going to happen.

This is How it Ends

(The above is courtesy of  http://www.bannerfans.com/banner_maker.php)

The trilogy is finally done! Okay, so it took longer than I had hoped that it would, but it’s still finished, and that’s what counts.  I’m not psyched with all of the ending bits (though some of them are great), largely because I realized that I’d walked myself into a plot hole with one of the sets of storylines. I already know how to *fix* it, it’s just that it would require me to go back and rewrite about ten thousand words, which can be saved for editing. So it’s less of a plot hole than a plot-that-is-waiting-for-proper-resolution.

But no matter! The trilogy is done. Everyone is dead, yet…somehow? There’s hope, that maybe there is a future. Maybe? The epilogue:

Suddenly, he was awake.  Blinking, he tried to rub the grit from his eyes. His arms felt weak, as though he’d not used them in years. A few moments later, he became aware of where he was; on a flat, hard bed in a tiny white room.  It was nowhere that he recognized, until he rose from the bed. The tubes in his arms disconnected as he moved and he looked down at them, wondering for a moment what they were.

There was only one doorway, and it was to there that he walked. Once he stepped through it, all of it came flashing back. The chaotic flight from the planet. The serenity of space. Learning to fly with the guidance of Major Lindov, just in case there was ever an emergency. Putting everyone to sleep. Saying goodbye to Sualam as they separated. Coming into that room and letting the thing put tubes in his body. And then sleep.

The room thrummed quietly. He looked around; it was all as clean as if he’d just left it yesterday, but Major Lindov had explained that the ship cleaned itself to prevent dust from building up and clogging systems. Though he didn’t understand what half those words meant, he just accepted them. The air smelled clean and fresh, not like it had been going around and around for a hundred years or more.

There was another room to the other side of the control room, and that was where Jovan walked now. Inside, he saw Sualam beginning to wake, struggling against his body’s own weakness, as Jovan had done. Finally, the older man sat up and when he saw Jovan, he smiled.

“We’re alive,” he said faintly.

Jovan nodded, leaning against the doorframe to conserve what little strength he had left. “Yes, we’re here.”

He didn’t know where here was, though, and he’d been afraid to look out of the window, for fear of what he might see.  Sualam slowly rose from the bed, stretching his body elaborately and walking, a little uneasily, towards the door.  Though it had obviously been a long time since they had gone to sleep, there was little that looked different in Sualam’s face. He was sure that he could even see the same awe that had been on his face when they’d first set foot on the ship.

They walked together to the control room and Jovan took his seat, wondering when Major Lindov was going to show up. It wasn’t as though he had a good grip of the controls yet, but he thought that he was probably competent enough to turn the ship around to get a look at where they were going, as all that could be seen through the front window was empty space. It was threatening and terrifying.

Slowly, the ship began to swing around. “Careful,” admonished Sualam.

Jovan smiled and kept going, though making sure that his movements were slow and fluid, as Major Lindov had told him when they were practicing, while they were flying through the planets that were near his own.

It didn’t take long before they had turned far enough. Before them stood the only planet that they could be reasonably heading towards. From this distance, it looked so small. Jovan saw a moon around it and as they drew closer, he could see that the moon was larger than the one on his own planet. The planet was smaller, though.

But there was more green, vibrant green that seemed to have taken over half the planet. The clouds were the same white, the water was the same blue, and Jovan felt his heart catch in his throat. For a moment, it was too hard to breathe, and he didn’t even try. All he could do was stare, and he could tell that Sualam was doing the same.

“This must be it,” he finally managed to say. “This is Earth.” The top and bottom of the planet were encased in what looked like snow, but nearly everything else was green. “This is…home.”

Major Lindov appeared on the screen again, looking the same as he always had. “If you’re hearing this, then the autopilot worked, the freezing systems worked, and unless I’m very much mistaken, you’re looking at Earth out there in the window. This is home. The other planet we were on? That was just a holiday. A long holiday, but now we’ve come home.”

Jovan reached across and gripped Sualam’s hand tightly. It was hard to control the emotions that he was feeling right now. Even though he hadn’t known that this planet had existed a short while ago, even though he had known all his life that the other planet was where humanity had always been, there was something buried deep in him, that had been buried for generations, that cried out at seeing this planet, that cried out in remembrance of being home.

“Now,” said Lindov, and his voice was all business, “the first thing you need to do is to check to see how many shuttles are operational. It’ll be a lot easier that way, as I’m pretty sure that you can count on no one being there to guide you down from the ground. But…to be sure, open your radio up on all frequencies and say something, anything. If there is someone listening, you will hear a reply, even if it’s one you can’t understand. Activate the external radio by reaching up over the normal com panel and flipping the first and third switches from the left, and then turn the dial forty-five degrees to the right to open up all channels. Do that now.”

Hand trembling, Jovan did as he was told. What if there were other humans down there? He looked across at Sualam, who nodded. Jovan cleared his throat nervously, and then said, “This is…Major Jovan Lindjham,” he said. That was the title that the other pilot had given himself, so Jovan thought that he deserved it as well. “Can anyone hear me?”

They waited for a long few minutes, holding their breath. Jovan didn’t know if he wanted there to be someone on the planet who could hear them or not. They waited, and there was no reply.

But that made something else in him buckle. This was where the last of humanity had been, and now there were none here, either. All of humanity on both planets was dead. The only ones left were those on the ship. It was a terrifying thought, to think that this was all that was left.

“I assume that no one replied, or you would have been given overrides for this recording,” said Lindov suddenly. “So now you need to check on the status of your shuttles. If you look to your right, over past the other chair, there should be a display that has twenty-four lights underneath it. Each of them represents one of your shuttles. If the lights are green, they’re functional. If they’re orange, they probably need fuel and you probably don’t have any, so they’re as good as worthless, and if they’re red, they’re damaged and cannot fly.”

Sualam was the one to check and he said, “There are fifteen green lights.”

“If there is more than one green light, then you are going to put this ship into orbit and ferry everyone down, I’m not talking you into an Earth landing, which would be even harder than it was for me to land mine on the other planet, if I can avoid it. I want you to adjust your course heading…”

And so the voice droned on, reading out instructions that were simple and easy to follow, in the patient tone of a teacher. Jovan knew that he would never need to know any of this again, but that was okay. He was hardly hearing any of it, and merely letting his hands do as they were supposed to. His mind was on something else entirely.

His mind was on the planet before them. It looked so beautiful and so untouched. Down here, there would be none of the problems that there had been in Fayrotin. There would be no rivalries between Califf and Fayrotin, there would be no more of the same strife. Everyone would be able to get along.

This was their second chance, and he wasn’t going to waste it.  As Earth grew ever bigger in the front window, he looked at Sualam and smiled. Before, they had been sad because they thought they were leaving home. Now he knew different: they had really been sad because they had been leaving a place of misery. Now they were coming home, home to the place of humanity’s birth, and here it was going to be different. Better. He would make sure of it.

Humanity had come home.

So, that’s that one done with. I’m proud of it and I can say that it’s going through to second draft stage. Final total wordcount for the project (as I’ve just now jammed it all into one file: 600,055).

Now, I move onto the last project of the month: Just a Glimpse, the synopsis of which follows:

Society is on the brink of collapse, the only thing keeping it together are the powerful influences of drugs, religion, and television. But everything is about to implode, in a country where the dictator can’t control his own family, let alone a whole country, and his wife is sleeping with the rebel who wants to bring the whole world crashing down.

But first, a celebratory little break as I switch my mind out of one gear and into the next.

Push to the finish…

…of the trilogy.

It’s 6:20pm here, I’ve been fed and plan to not leave the bedroom save for bathroom and possible snack-runs.  I’ve got 665,034 words.

By midnight, the goal is 680-685.

By sleep, the goal is 700k.

Everything is winding down, characters are dying or surviving, and all of the final connective strands are slowly falling into place.

35k, then sleep.